Bulldogs win playoff opener

   MONONA — They say it is hard to beat a team twice in a season in high school football. Somebody forgot to relay that message to MFL MarMac. Friday the Bulldogs rolled up nearly 600 yards of offense in their way to a record-setting 60-24 victory over South Winneshiek in the first round of the playoffs.

   The ‘Dogs (10-0) advance to the playoff quarterfinals where they will face Grundy Center (9-1). The Spartans advanced with a one-sided win over Belle Plaine, 28-14.

   The victory was the second of the season for the Bulldogs over a team they had not beaten in 11 years prior.

   “We were charged up,” Bulldog coach Dan Anderson said of his team. “This is a big rivalry. I tell my kids to stay off social media and Snapchat stuff and with those kids from that school, they’re kind of buddy-buddy in a way but they are also competitive. And when they said something to our kids, ‘… we’re going to stop your sweep …’ that fires kids up quite a bit. There was some chatter back-and-forth this week that they were going to stop our sweep, so what did we give them – a big old dose of sweep to see if they could stop it, and I guess they couldn’t.”

   The Bulldogs rushed for 430 yards in the game and finished with five different running backs topping the 50-yard mark. Senior quarterback Cedrick Drahn added 158 passing yards in a game that was played with a running clock for much of the fourth quarter.

   “I saw a few things that the kids messaged and that’s why I tell the kids to stay off that because that’s just fuel, bulletin board material, you don’t do that,” Anderson said. “The kids were not happy and I was not happy as a coach when I saw some of the things that the guys had sent about how we could collect our participation trophy and they’ve got bigger fish to fry after this week.”

For more of this story see the Nov. 6 Outlook, available at local retailers now.